Once A Ranger
by BlueWolf1995
Summary: Twenty years after putting their spandex behind them, the Power Rangers reunite to fight a new and dangerous threat, the Rangers of Aquitar. Old wounds re-open and old enemies become allies when friends turn foe, and the Power Rangers must overcome their own issues to become heroes again. Written by BlueWolf1995 & TaraSoleil
1. Prologue

Prologue

The Jeep's tires sang on the asphalt as she drove. Night was coming on fast, and she wanted to be at her new apartment before darkness set in. Still, she couldn't keep herself from turning off the freeway into the scenic overlook. Years ago, when she had lived here all her short life, she couldn't understand why people stood in awe this far above the city. Now, after so long away, she knew what they saw in it. The miles of interconnecting streets lit up like Christmas, a brilliant spider's web of humanity stretching out through the valley.

Angel Grove.

How long had she been away? How many years had it been since she last set foot there?

Too many, according to her mother.

Too few, said the ache in her chest.

The engine purred patiently as she sat, letting memories blow through her mind as the Santa Ana winds did her blonde hair. Her slim fingers curled around the chill metal hanging from the rear view mirror, remembering the last time it had sounded a call. It had been silent for as long as she had been away and was little more than a replacement for the lucky rabbit's foot that had grown politically incorrect around the time she reached junior high. Her hand dropped from the blue and silver talisman, and her eyes returned to the road.

A rueful smile pulled at her mouth as she shifted gears. "Let's do this."


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The fish taco sat before her untouched. She had a love-hate relationship with fish, one heavy on the hate. Across the table, the man dressed primarily in black shoveled nachos and chili into his mouth as if he hadn't eaten in months. At least he used a napkin rather than wiping his fingers on his slacks.

"Do you eat like this in front of your students, Mr. Oliver?"

Tommy grinned around a mouthful of nachos but had the courtesy to swallow before replying. "Don't eat in front of them."

"When do you eat lunch?" she questioned. "Come to think of it, _where_ do you eat lunch?" Kate 'KC' Carter, newly hired science teacher at Angel Grove High, had spent her first week eating lunch in the cafeteria when her homeroom students ate their lunch. She hadn't seen Tommy. Nearly every other teacher, but not him. She couldn't blame him for not dining with his students. The cafeteria was noisy, crowded and stunk like the least appetizing combination of overcooked broccoli, sweat socks and hormones anyone could imagine, but it was also like coming home. That had been her school, her lunchroom. It had been where Billy—

"Standing at my desk between third and fourth period," Tommy replied, thankfully cutting into her memories before they did any damage.

"You could sit with me in the lunchroom, you know," KC informed him.

"Aw, I can sit at the cool table?" he smirked and offered her shoulder a playful punch, no real force behind it. "Thanks, but my lunch break is dedicated to tutoring the kids who can't make it to morning tutorial sessions and have to work or babysit their siblings after school."

"Look at you go, still saving the world," she grinned.

The longest serving Power Ranger ducked his head as his cheeks flushed with embarrassment or possibly with delayed response to the Sriracha he had poured over his chili cheese nachos. "Yeah, well, I do what I can," he muttered and cleared his throat. "How was your first week?"

KC shrugged. "I think I'm still in survival mode."

"As are we all," he agreed.

"I just feel like I ought to be doing more. So far it's just been reviewing the safety rules of the lab, reminding them how to behave in a classroom and quizzing them to see how much they've managed to forget over the summer," she sighed and dropped her head to the tabletop with a hard 'thud'. "I was going to be an astronaut or, at the very least, build a better mouse trap."

She felt the heavy hand land consolingly on her shoulder. "You can still build that mouse trap you've always dreamed of," Tommy assured her. "Besides, with your knowledge of physics, you can clean house at Skee Ball and Putt-Putt."

"I do rock the mini golf course," she agreed.

"We should totally do that," he declared, glancing at his watch. "Just not today. Kim's expecting us for dinner." He promptly shoved the last of the nachos into his mouth.

"Is there something I should know about your wife's cooking?" KC questioned, eyes narrowing as the mess disappeared into his distended cheeks.

He looked guiltily down at his plate even as he wiped the last of the cheese off with his finger. "She's been working her way through the cooking section of the bookstore. I didn't mind when it was Italian and Chinese, but it's nothing but French food lately." His face contorted at the idea of having to eat what passed for haute cuisine in the Oliver household.

KC managed to form a sympathetic face, though the thought of having a live-in chef sounded about as close to heaven as one could achieve without actually dying. "Let's hope she's put that on hold for tonight."

"Doubtful," the man grumbled and signaled for the check.

The massive figure made his way over, the jovial smile on his face a far cry from the surly scowl he had worn through his excessive number of years in high school. In the time she had been away, Farkas Bulkmeier had shed his leather gloves, metal studs and punk rebellion in favor of civic pride and a keen business savvy. What he lacked in scholastic aptitude, he more than made up for in the ability to hire a clever accountant and sociable staff. He had taken up Ernie's mantle with gusto, and the Youth Center was as vital and on-trend with the high school students as it had ever been.

"Need that to go?" Bulk questioned.

KC looked down at the taco she hadn't taken even a single bite of, guilt quickly overtaking her long-standing hatred of anything with fins and a tail. "Yeah, thanks, Bulk."

In less than two minutes, the taco was wrapped in waxed paper and placed inside a paper bag with the Youth Center's logo printed proudly in bright colors. It would be going in the trash as soon as she got home, but Bulk didn't need to know that.

Tommy stood, offering Bulk a handshake before moving toward the door. KC lingered by the table, brown eyes taking the building in as she had not dared when they first walked in. The differences were enough to make her feel comfortable. The décor had changed, some of the fitness equipment had been traded out as trends came and went. One thing hadn't changed, though. It was still a safe place for high schoolers. Two boys had entered into an impromptu martial arts competition, throwing punches and kicks. She recognized Jason's style in the taller boy's form, and he would be proud to know that tall boy offered his hand to help the other fighter off the mats. If the Power ever returned to Angel Grove, she knew which of these boys would be selected as leader of the new team.

"KC! You coming?" Tommy's voice called to her.

"Yeah!" she shouted and ran to catch up.

The drive from the Youth Center to the house Tommy and Kimberly had bought the previous year should have taken the better part of thirty minutes. With Tommy driving, they made it in fifteen. His time as a Turbo Ranger had apparently left him with an insatiable need for speed. Even a brief stint as an amateur racecar driver – and subsequent crash that left him with a broken leg – hadn't been enough to slake his inner speed demon.

KC remembered the crash, though she had been across the country when it happened. Tommy had been a rising star in the racing industry. There was talk of a multi-million-dollar contract to join a Formula 1 team. Then the crash happened. Some reports claimed it was an accident, others insisted it was deliberate sabotage. No one could prove either supposition to be true, and, regardless of the details, Tommy was left in traction for a month with nothing to entertain himself besides daytime television and books. Kat had written to her, saying how many books Tommy had started reading, how quickly he was digesting the information and amazed that he was starting to talk in scientific jargon. Before the month was out, Tommy was applying to college to study science – paleontology of all things.

A speed-demon scientist. KC shook her head in amusement at the idea.

Her smile dimmed as the tires screeched, and the car skidded to a stop outside the house. Tommy didn't pull into the driveway. He couldn't. It was full. Cars were parked in two rows from the street to the garage door. Six in all, plus two more in the street.

"Is there something you failed to mention, Mr. Oliver?" she demanded.

"Uh, yeah, about that. Kim was really excited that you were moving back," he hedged and seemed to shrink under her hard glare. "She might have told everyone you were coming home. And they might have planned a 'welcome back' party."

KC groaned. "I hate parties."

"Did I say party? It's not a party. It's a dinner. A really good dinner."

"You said it was French food."

"Yeah, but there won't be any fish."

She considered his words a moment before giving a single, determined nod. "I'm sold."

"Oh, thank God," he sighed.

Her arrival at the house was consumed in a blur of hugs, tears and greetings. She hadn't realized how much she missed everyone she had left behind. At the time, getting away from everyone and everything that had anything to do with _him_ had seemed the only way of keeping herself whole and sane. She had considered the Rangers a cancer and cut them from her life accordingly, but she had been wrong. They weren't to blame for what happened, for him leaving, for her heart breaking.

"Dinner is served!" Rocky declared with a grand gesture toward the dining room.

"Is it pâté and foie gras?" Tommy asked, face pulled into a grimace.

"No, pizza," the man replied with a grin. "Pizza a la De Santos." He stepped aside to make room for the stampede. KC was swept along in the rush, not that she minded. Pizza was possibly one of the greatest of human inventions, and in Rocky's expert hands it could only get better. He applied and was accepted to the California Culinary Academy and packed his bags for San Francisco a month after KC made her run for the East coast. Years later, the name De Santos was one every foodie in the country knew; there wasn't a food critic in the world who hadn't sung his praises – and Rocky had a wall filled with framed reviews to prove it.

His masterpieces this evening included the classics – ham and pineapple, meatball and mushroom, and margherita – as well as some variations – salami and spinach, strawberry and balsamic vinegar, and, what quickly became her absolute favorite, shiitake, chanterelle and goat cheese.

"Oh, my god, is it too late to marry you?" KC moaned as she bit into her fifth slice of the two mushroom and goat cheese pizza.

"Yeah, sorry," Rocky replied with a shrug. "Taken. And gay."

"How long did it take you to figure that out?" Adam questioned.

"About five minutes in San Francisco."

"Stop stomping all over my fantasies," KC whined. "I have the most beautiful image of you cooking me this pizza every night."

Rocky snorted. "I cook all day. The last thing I want to do is cook at home, too."

"Destroyer."

"I live off reheated experiments and Hot Pockets," he insisted.

"Blasphemy! Make it stop!" she cried and threw herself down into the nearest chest, which happened to be Adam's.

He ran a comforting hand down her back and gave her head a reassuring pat. "It's okay. Somewhere, there is a man who will cook for you."

"Really?"

"I'm sure of it. Not me, obviously. I've only managed to fine art of boiling water."

"Plus, you're taken," Tanya prompted.

"Yeah, that, too," Adam added as if it were a minor detail. "But mainly it's the inept in the kitchen thing keeping us apart."

His wife slapped the back of his head, but it was obvious there was no real force or venom behind it. They had all played these games since high school, flirting and pretending and being generally stupid to make up for the weight of responsibility that they had taken up at so young an age. Their classmates had played these games for real, all their happiness dependent on who they dated, but, as Rangers, they all knew better.

KC thought she had been smart enough not to get caught up in that petty game of hearts. She probably had been, but, when you fall, you get broken. And she fell hard.

The doorbell rang, breaking up the silly squabble.

"Did you order pizza?" Rocky questioned, affronted at the very idea that his food wouldn't be sufficient.

"Relax," Kimberly ordered. "It's probably the Home Owner's Association complaining about the cars." She stomped to the door, ready to battle the HOA with as much conviction as she had Rita Repulsa and poverty in third world nations. Her voice carried through the hall as she threw the door wide, "Okay, what do you—"

Her voice dried in her throat, making her croak the final word before falling silent.

In the living room, everyone stopped, straining to catch some clue as to who or what made the spitfire Pink Ranger grow quiet so suddenly. Tommy launched himself to his feet and hurried to the door, his own voice barely audible as he muttered, "Holy shit."


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The silence grew heavy. It had been anticipatory, but with Tommy's quiet declaration it turned fearful. A youth spent fighting wave after wave of evil had left the lingering feeling of doom in all of them. Even KC, who had never worn a Power Coin or commanded a 'Zord, felt it. Years had passed without incident in Angel Grove, but that only fed the conviction that the evil was merely hibernating, growing in strength until it leapt from the depths of the earth, huge and unconquerable.

"Oh, honestly," Kat huffed and pushed herself to her feet, marching to the door. Her voice, still thick with accent despite the years spent in California, carried loud and clear through the hall. "Billy!"

"What?" KC said, ice crystallizing in her gut.

This was not happening. This could _not_ be happening.

He was gone. Gone to another planet. She had left, moved on. She was happy, _finally_ happy.

The world spun and grew fuzzy around the edges as unconsciousness threatened, but she felt the firm hands on her shoulders, dug her nails into the back of the couch, the upholstery tearing under the strength of her dread. She held on. She was awake when he made his way into the living room flanked by the former Pink Rangers. Billy Cranston.

"Billy," someone said. It took her a moment to realize that she had been the one who spoke.

He looked good. Damn, why did he have to look good? She had let her imagination run wild since he had left. His hairline had started receding slightly after high school, so she imagined he had gone completely bald by now. He wasn't. The hairline was the same, giving him a more pronounced widow's peak that pointed down toward his blue eyes. Worry still put a crease from the corners of his nose to those of his mouth, but it wasn't the deep, aging scar of a line she imagined. It was enough to make it look as if he had spent a lifetime laughing and thinking, which he had.

He looked good.

How _dare_ he look so good?

Anger flared up in her. He had no right to look that good. For what he did, he deserved to be that bald, scarred, shriveled hunchback she turned him into in her mind. For what he did, he deserved to suffer.

Her hand flew out and slapped him in the face with enough force to make his head snap to the side. When he turned back, he looked apologetic, and his lip was bleeding.

"I think I should make clear relevant details of the situation surrounding my unexpected departure," the man said, dabbing at the blood with his shirt sleeve. He still wore blue.

"Huh?" more than one person present asked.

"He's thinks he should explain why he left," Aisha offered.

A collective 'oh' ran through the room and everyone moved to return to their seats, the mood less tense. KC sat, Tommy's arm protectively around her, his body a real, physical barrier between her and the man who broke her heart.

The only one who didn't sit was Billy. He stood anxiously, a hand gripping his forearm in a nervous habit she had never seen before. She remembered how awkward he was in high school; public speaking was enough to send him running. He stood his ground today.

He cleared his throat. "My departure was not voluntary," he began. "I would not have chosen to leave."

"You were kidnapped?" Aisha asked.

"By who?" Kat demanded.

"Whom," Tanya corrected absently. No one paid her any attention.

"The Rangers of Aquitar," Billy said, which earned more than a few cries of disbelief from the Rangers assembled. "I traveled to Aquitar to assist in resolving their problems, which I did with considerable speed. I had been assured that once the problem was corrected, I would be provided with transportation home. But the next day, a new situation arose that needed my expertise and another and another. It seemed there was no end to their difficulties. It took a year before I realized the reality of my situation." Again, his hand massaged at this forearm.

"What is that?" KC demanded, launching herself at him before anyone could stop her. She yanked the man's sleeve up to his elbow, revealing an oblong semi-circle of pink scar tissue. "This is a bite mark."

Billy sighed, deflated, "Their new foot soldiers – a genetically engineered blend of humanoid and some of earth's most deadly fish species. This one was a barracuda."

KC shivered at the thought. She had been scuba diving on a family trip to Puerto Rico, had seen those predatory fish in action. She had seen a row of them lined up on the dock, the haul of a proud fisherman; their teeth long and sharp and terrifying to a girl with a phobia of needles. She recognized the seemingly irregular pattern of pin-hole scars on the top of his arm and the line of perfectly spaced scars on the other side.

"They have foot soldiers?" Jason questioned. "Are they planning to attack someone?"

"Yes," Billy said, his voice soft as if he were speaking only to the woman still cradling his arm in her hands. "Us."

"'Us' meaning us," Adam asked, gesturing to the people gathered in the living room. "Or 'us' meaning us." Here he gestured to the broader world as a whole.

"As near as I was able to determine, their goal is the overthrow of the people of earth."

"So us," he said, waving his arms to encompass the world.

"How do you know that?" Kat asked. She had a way of making a question brimming with suspicion sound merely curious. "If they were playing at being friendly with you, surely they wouldn't have been talking about their plans in front of you."

"No, but once I realized what they were doing and tried escaping, they ceased their pretense and treated me as the prisoner I was," Billy said. "I made four failed attempts before I managed to reach the interstellar travel pods."

"And those things don't have GPS?" Jason said as if it were an obvious flaw in the man's plan.

"Even if GPS were the appropriate form of tracking in this situation, it would be irrelevant. This is my home. They know where I'll go."

"So, you brought them to our doorstep."

"They've been here before," Billy reminded him. "We invited them. If anything, my escape and their attempts to find me will work in our favor. Their plans were still being drawn. They weren't ready for an invasion. Their Piscelons aren't trained and are too few in number to do any real damage to Earth."

A hand rose from the couch. "Sorry, but 'Piscelon'?"

"The genetically engineered foot soldiers," he explained to Tanya.

"And how many of them are there?" Jason asked, his strategic brain beginning to formulate plans and coordinate counter attacks.

"Forty fully grown with another forty in the hatchery. I rigged it to explode before I left, but I can't promise it wasn't disarmed."

"You tried, man," Tommy assured him. "And you gave us a head start."

"A head start?" Kimberly repeated. "A head start at what? You're a high school teacher! We aren't Power Rangers anymore! We have no powers, no suits. You threw your back out last month trying to move a log from the backyard!"

"Hey, that was a big log," he insisted, rubbing at the memories of the pain in his back.

"She's right, though," Aisha said, ever the voice of reason. "Without powers, we can't defeat Rangers."

"Wait, are they still Rangers?" Tanya questioned, hope in her voice. "The Power is dependent on the holders being good. If they're no longer good, then they can't be Rangers. Right?"

Everyone nodded their agreement and turned hopefully to Billy, who shook his head in a slow, apologetic gesture. "They're plans to overthrow the planet stem, in their minds, from an intent to help. They talked to me – _at_ me – after my first failed escape attempt. They spoke of the cruelty of humanity, the pain we inflict on one another, the chaos we bring and the order and peace of mind they could bestow. They want to help."

"By enslaving us?" Kimberly scoffed.

"That isn't how they see it."

"This is too much." The petite brunette threw her hands in the air, the official signal that the gathering was now over.

Billy stood, face drawn and creased in concern, as they walked past him to leave. Engines roared and soon there was no one left but Tommy, Billy and her. Kimberly was off in the kitchen putting away the last of the pizza.

"What are we going to do?" Billy questioned.

"What we always did," Tommy assured him.

KC smiled, pulling the talisman from her pocket and pressing the cool metal into his hand. "Once a Ranger, always a Ranger."

He looked down, a torrent of emotions flooding his face before his features settled on grateful. The blue and silver communicator was the only thing of his she had taken when she left Angel Grove. It had been a reminder of unpleasantness for so long, though it didn't deserve the stigma she has attached to it. It was a symbol of ingenuity, determination, hope.

All the things they still needed.

"Once a Ranger," he agreed, his voice soft but brimming with those same three traits symbolized by the communicator he now wore on his wrist.


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The hotel pillows smelled wrong. He was excessively attentive of things that were wrong, his mind focusing on them with painful awareness. He had lived as a prisoner for a year, ignored all the little details at his own peril. If only he had just trusted his instincts instead of reasoning those details away, maybe he could have caught on quicker, escaped sooner, done more damage to the Alien Rangers' operation instead of helping to build up their army.

It was his brain that modified the cloning chambers, the computers and hyperbaric system used to acclimate the Piscelons to Earth's atmospheric pressure. Project after project he completed, so eager to help, so dedicated to the cause of science.

He sat up in the bed, throwing the pillows across the room. He curled in on himself, guilt making his chest ache, making his thoughts dark. He rarely slept long enough to dream. When he did, he relived the nightmare years he spent prisoner on Aquitar, the cage where they watched him work; the cell where he slept; all deception gone in the end. They hauled him into the hatchery, showed him all the small pieces of their grand design – all the pieces he had fixed for them – assembled into the larger whole, into the nightmare machine that would help annihilate human freedom.

A scream ripped from his throat as he shot up in bed, sheets a tangle around his legs and sweat beading on his forehead.

The room was dark, quiet, safe. He was alone. The enemy wasn't yet at the gate.

His gasps echoed in his ears as he leaned heavily on the headboard bolted to the wall. His heart rate fell to normal, and he sat in silence. His mind quieted, though the guilt remained. He was to blame. He had to help alleviate the threat.

The long flight back to Earth had given him time to plan. The month spent rebuilding an identity, returning to the normalcy of freedom and tracking down all his friends, had given him time to assess the state of the planet's defenses. He knew they could fight. He knew they could win. But his entire plan depended on one person trusting him enough to help. All his friends had spent years believing he deserted them, abandoned them for the promise of alien technology and love. Even knowing it was a lie sent to trick them, he wasn't sure any of them would trust him, least of all the one he needed most.

"Give it time," he told himself as he felt the anxiety rising again.

He tried to trust in the mantra, but they didn't have much time. The Aquitians might not decide to wait for the next batch of soldiers to hatch. They might believe their existing force more than a match for Earth. If the struck now, Billy knew they didn't stand a chance. But if they were patient, chose to wait, he would have time enough to gather what they needed. It was a gamble. But if he had learned anything in the past few years, it was that sometimes the risk was worth the reward.

oOo

He shifted his weight nervously from one foot to the other as he considered the door before him.

'Come back in the morning,' he had been told.

It was nearing nine o'clock now. He remembered his mother insisting on the Rule of Nine when it came to calling her friends. She never called anyone before nine AM or after nine PM. He would wait just a couple more minutes before knocking. As he paced a short circuit around the doormat, the door swung open.

"Seriously, just come in," Tommy said, his voice thick with sleep or possibly aggravation.

"I was—"

"Waiting. I know." It was aggravation, Billy decided as the man turned and trudged deeper into the house.

"I didn't want to—"

"Disturb us. I know."

"Should I wait outside?" Billy questioned.

"No," Tommy said into his mug of coffee. "Kim would kill me if I made you wait outside."

"But you want to," he observed.

The man he once considered one of his closest friends sighed, the hard line of his shoulder dropping as he let his true feelings out. "I know it wasn't your fault. You went to get help and to help them, but what went down after you left…" he sighed again. "It might not have been intentional, but the affects were real. The pain was real. The heartbreak was real. She loved you, and you just left."

"I was aging at an accelerated rate," he insisted. "I would have died of old age at nineteen years old! Why would I have subjected her to that if there was a reasonable alternative?"

"And that's where I want to punch you in the face," Tommy said, fist forming at his side. "Because you didn't ask her. You didn't think that maybe she had a say in whether you left alone or not. She was ready to drop everything and go with you, so you wouldn't have to go through all that alone. But you were selfish, Billy. You put yourself first."

His mouth fell open. "I… I didn't. I didn't want her to have to see me that way I was. I loved her too much to make her suffer."

"Whatever you gotta tell yourself, man," he said, his voice soft and quiet, but it felt like a fist.

He turned, leaving Billy alone to stare at the pristine countertops and professional grade oven. It was so clean and perfect; it felt unreal. Again, it felt wrong, but this time it was him that was wrong, out of place. He had been gone too long. The world had moved on, but he was the same. Had KC? The way she acted last night didn't give him the impression that she had healed and moved on. The look on her face when she saw him, like she was being broken, like the pain was still fresh. She still loved him. That's why Tommy was being so overprotective.

Without meaning to, he smiled.

She still loved him.

"Someone looks happy this morning," Kimberly chirped as she all but twirled into the kitchen.

"I have just reached an undeniable conclusion," he reported.

"That KC's still stuck on you?"

"How—?"

"Everyone knows it," she said and began plucking pans and pots down from the rack hanging above their heads. "Poached eggs and bacon alright with you?"

"Affirmative," he replied absently, too absorbed in further proof of his hypothesis to much care what she offered.

"Billy, she's upstairs. Go talk to her."

He hesitated. "You think that's a wise course of action?"

"Wise? Who knows? But the right one? Hell, yes. Now go before Tommy tries to physically block your way." She shooed him toward the stairs with a frying pan as if he were an unwanted pest.

It was easy to find the guest room. The doors to the other rooms were open wide – such a far cry from the doors locked and barred that he had encountered for the past few years. Hers was the only one still closed. He offered the kind of soft knock one gives when hoping the occupant isn't there or won't hear, but she did.

"Yeah," she said through the door, not a yell, but with enough volume that he could hear her through the solid wood.

"Kate." He opened the door, peering through the gap to see her sitting on the bed. She was dressed as she had been the previous night, her hair still lay straight against her head. He had woken beside her enough times to know that her hair stood in all directions in the morning, which meant her head hadn't touched the pillow last night. "You didn't sleep."

"Too worried to sleep. You know that," she replied, her voice far away as she continued to stare out the window. It was the kind of beautiful day only Southern California could produce, but he knew that she saw neither blue sky nor swaying palm frond. Her vision was clouded with the darkness to come. It's what made her such an asset and such a survivor; she planned for the absolute worst eventualities.

"What's going to happen?"

He shrugged.

"Posit the most probable scenario," she prompted.

"You want me to guess?"

"Yes."

"All right," he sighed and sat down beside her. She didn't shift away from him, but she also didn't lean closer. "Two possibilities. Possibility One: The Alien Rangers will strike now before we have time to prepare. The Piscelons will be sent to weaken us before the Rangers themselves finish the job. Possibility Two: The Alien Rangers will wait for their second hatch of Piscelons, which will give us an extra month to prepare our defenses. The Piscelons will be sent, but will be defeated. The Alien Rangers will come."

"And will also be defeated?" she added hopefully.

"That outcome is heavily dependent on one person."

"Me?"

He smiled. "If it were only so simple. No, on Tommy."

The woman beside him blinked her confusion. "You came all this way for Tommy Oliver?"

"No, I came all this way for Earth and all of human kind," he insisted," which requires the expertise of _Doctor_ Tommy Oliver."

"You came all this way for _Tommy_ _Oliver_." She was on her feet now, her sneakers silently pacing the carpet as she built up speed and anger. "You came—"

"I love you," he said, blocking her path and gripping her shoulders. "I do. I have loved you from the moment I saw you in AP Biology, and I will continue to love you for as long as I have oxygen in my lungs and blood pumping through my heart. I love you. And I want to save you from being enslaved by people I once thought allies, but to do that, yes, I require the knowledge and skill of Tommy Oliver."

"Seriously?" she groaned. "I am trying to be mad at you. Why did you have to go and say all that?"

"Because it's true."

"God, you're perfect. I hate you."

He smiled. "I love you."

"You suck!"


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Within an hour, the Olivers' home was as full and noisy as it had been the previous night prior to Billy's world-tipping arrival and revelations. Rocky and Kimberly were fighting over the kitchen, each claiming dominance – one based on his education and numerous stars, the other on actual ownership. It was difficult to know whether the whir of the blender or the smell of bacon drew more to the already crowded room.

From her perch on a stool overseeing the action, KC admired the dance of the former Rangers as they spun and dodged, gathering slices of bacon, pancakes, smoothies and juice. No one so much as brushed against another. It was amazing, and spoke to the amount of time the ten had all spent together in various configurations. She wasn't going to even try to lie to herself. She was jealous. She was also scared that, if she attempted to enter into the dance, she would interrupt the rhythm and remind everyone that she didn't belong. She had never been a Ranger. Luck, attraction and far too much time spent at the Youth Center in high school had simply thrown her into the mix.

All these years later, she really had no business being here.

"Rock-cakes?" Rocky said with a smile, depositing before her a plate filled with what might possibly be the most perfect pancakes she had ever seen in her life.

"Is it a sin to add syrup?" she questioned.

"Nope!"

"Then pass that bottle," she ordered, gesturing to the bottle.

"When you tell me why you're hiding on that side of the counter," he said, holding the bottle just beyond her reach.

"I'm not hiding. I'm sitting comfortably."

The face he made indicated just how big and fat a liar he thought she was.

"I'm trying to stay angry at Billy," she huffed, grabbing at the syrup when he finally dropped it in front of her.

"You don't need to try. Everyone thinks you're in the right," the chef informed her.

"Not about that, about why he came back."

"To save the world. Pretty heroic."

She shook her head and stabbed at the pancakes. "He came back for _Tommy_. For his _knowledge_ and _expertise_." Her derisive scoff morphed into a groan as she took a bite of breakfast. "Damn it, why do you taunt me like this? You seriously need to stop being gay."

He only laughed and gave her hand a consoling pat. "Sorry."

"Jerk."

Whatever his reply might have been, it was lost in the pounding of a set of sturdy knuckles against a frying pan. The ring of clad metal cut through the chatter, focusing attention on the man who brought them all to order. Tommy.

She wanted to be annoyed with him, too, but Tommy couldn't help it if Billy needed him more than he did her. She was good at science, better than good. She was second only to Billy in their class standing, studied at MIT, worked on projects with Nobel Laureates, though she wasn't so good as to be one herself. Like Tommy, she, too, had skills. She, too, had expertise. It just wasn't the sort that Billy needed. Jerk.

Her thoughts cleared and ears perked up to the conversation as soon as the name 'Zordon' was used.

"It happened once before," Adam reminded everyone.

"Yeah, when Zordon was here," Kimberly practically spat, as if the reminder of their great mentor's loss was still too fresh to bear discussing.

"And the Morphing Grid," Zach said, shaking his head sadly as he played with a now-useless Power Coin.

"That's rather my point," Billy replied, continuing slowly after a pause, "that is, if my hypothesis is correct."

"Explain."

"In English," Rocky added.

"Well, the Morphing Grid still exists. Weakened and damaged, but it exists. Some of you have used it in emergencies – Adam, Jason, Tommy. The Power is there, and, _if I'm correct_ ," he said again, stressing the phrase so much it almost felt forced, "then it's possible the Power Chamber, if not the entire Command Center is, as well."

A silence weighed down heavily with possibilities fell on them. KC could only image the ideas the old heroes were entertaining. It was obvious from the looks of hope and nostalgia on their faces that they wanted to reclaim something precious each thought beyond reach. She felt that stab of jealousy once again. Whatever it was that touched their lives, it hadn't touched hers. At least not in a beneficial way – a giant pig monster had eaten her pesto… and then thrown it up again.

"I suspect," Billy said, as hesitant as before, "that there's a chance – a fairly good chance if my calculations are accurate – that the tube in which Zordon had been trapped in his time warp was so saturated with radiation that, even with Zordon gone, it continued to have a healing affect on the area around it."

"Huh?"

"Consider Alpha 5. How old was he? I studied his circuitry and, even if he were the fifth model of his type since Zordon was trapped, he would still be far too old to function as well as he did. Living beings are the only machines that improve with use. All others deteriorate. Parts wear out. Circuits corrode. Yet Alpha 5 functioned with minimal glitches."

"So, you're saying, he shouldn't have?" Kat questioned.

"Precisely!" he said. "The time warp leeched through the tube, rejuvenating anything within a certain radius. That energy, and the power to repair, is still within the tube itself. It housed Zordon in his time warp for centuries."

"Exactly how much time did you spend thinking about this?" Jason asked, brows folded together with the effort of following even this simplified version of his hypothesis.

Billy looked rather sheepish when he said. "At least four hours of every day after realizing I was in a prison."

The original Red Ranger replied with a sarcastic, "Only four?"

"The rest of my days were spent plotting escape, sabotage and generally regretting my life choices," he admitted. "And missing KC."

She froze at the mention of her name, heat creeping up her neck and coloring her a red as deep as any Jason, Tommy and Rocky had worn.

Adam became her new hero when he cleared his throat rather pointedly, drawing their eyes away from her. "So, you're saying the Power Chamber is probably still out there in the desert. Are you suggesting we go there?"

"Affirmative," Billy said, his eyes lingering on her even as he answered the question.

"Dibs on the front seat!" KC joked.

"I thought we might take a faster route," he said, pulling his shirtsleeve up to show the communicator she had returned to him only just last night. Her head spun to think that it had only been eleven hours earlier that she had pressed that cool metal into his hand. It felt like half a lifetime had passed.

"Do they work?" Jason asked, digging into his pocket to find his own communicator.

The genius offered a modest shrug. "I linked them directly to the Morphing Grid and the Command Center teleportation system. They failed to function only in the most dire situations when the Command Center itself had been compromised." He paused only long enough to offer Tommy a sympathetic glance, as the man had been able to do more damage than most while possessed by Rita's evil spell. "If my hypothesis is correct, enough of the Power Chamber and Command Center have been restored to be able to teleport, if not directly into the Chamber, at least into the nearby vicinity."

All were silent as they digested both their breakfasts and the implications of a functioning Power Chamber.

It was Aisha who broke their contemplative quiet. "What happens if there isn't enough power for all of us to teleport?"

Nine sets of eyes snapped back toward the resident know-it-all. A frown pulled at this mouth as he considered the possibility. "Even when damaged, the teleportation system has safeguards. I studied it thoroughly before creating the communicators. If the Grid is that damaged, we would be unable to teleport. If there isn't power enough to complete the teleport, we would re-materialize safely at some midway point in the journey."

"Does anybody else suddenly feel like driving?" Zack asked, glancing around for a show of hands.

"Actually," Jason said, "having at least one person with a car wouldn't be a bad idea. Zack, you can pick us up if we end up stranded halfway to the Command Center."

"You owe me gas and a pizza," the man bargained.

"Deal."

The original and, by his own proclamation, most stylish Black Ranger, took the communicator from his pocket and set it on the counter in front of KC. She studied it but made no move to take it. The lines of it were identical to Billy's though, where his had been blue, Zack's was black. Where Billy's had been modified and altered as the genius attempted different configurations of his design, Zack kept his polished and perfect, fond memories and pride of accomplishment refusing to allow even a scratch to mar it.

"You can keep it," she said weakly. "I don't need to go."

Zack just offered a snort.

"I don't," she insisted, voice strong with annoyance. "I'm not a Ranger. Never was. There's no reason for me to be a part of this. I can drive a second car, or just go home and write up my lesson plans for next week."

"Like you haven't already got them written until Christmas break," Tommy scoffed.

"So what if I have," she protested. "It doesn't change the fact that I'm kind of useless when it comes to this whole Power Ranger thing."

"You're coming," Billy said. He said it so quietly; she was half-convinced it had been in her head. When she looked to him, however, she knew her ears had not been playing tricks on her. His face was set with that absolute determination he only ever wore when he was one hundred percent convinced his ideas were correct. He had worn it the day after the he hadn't met her for their study session – the day, she later learned, he and the others had been teleported to the Youth Center to receive their powers. He wore that look the day after he vanished from the Science Fair. Most importantly, to her anyway, he wore that look on the day he asked her out on a date. There was no denying him when he wore that look.

"Fine," she sighed.

The metal felt odd when she slid it on to her wrist. She had never been much for wristwatches or bracelets. It warmed quickly against her skin, as Billy's had when she held it in her hand. Hesitantly, she pressed a button, making it chirp. She glanced around, waiting for someone to tell her how it was meant to work. In all the years she had been guardian of Billy's invention, she had never attempted to use it.

"Press these to make it zap you where you want to go," Zack said, pointing to the three buttons set close to the case.

"Ready?" Billy questioned.

"As I'll ever be," replied KC, unwilling to admit just how terrified she was at the prospect of having her body torn down to the atomic level. She wrapped herself in false bravado and grinned as she said, "Let's do this."

Fingers pressed buttons, and she knew nothing else.


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

From the moment she had learned the truth about her friends and their unexplained disappearances during times of crisis and monster attacks, KC had been cultivating a mental image of their HQ. Billy had embellished it, as much as a man who speaks in absolute truths and scientific accuracies can embellish. She wasn't crazy enough to image it as a zen-like oasis or psychedelic world of color and light, but she had a fairly fantastic view of what the hidden world of Power Rangers might be like. The reality had no hope of being anything but a disappointment.

A dank basement filled with nothing but cobwebs and boxes marked 'Save' or 'Do Not Discard' was well below even her lowest expectation.

"Anybody else got déjà vu?" Adam quipped, hauling himself to his feet.

Beside him, Tanya was too busy brushing dust from her pants to reply. Behind her, Rocky and Jason were doing the same. No one seemed to much care where they had landed, that it seemed to be the basement of some abandoned warehouse or that it was seemingly vacant and in no way Power Ranger-y.

Billy and Tommy were on their feet nearby, giving the landscape an appraising look.

"It appears my hypothesis has been proven correct," Billy said as he wiped the dust from a box. "See." The words his fingers revealed read 'Command Center'.

"It worked!" Kat exclaimed.

"Where are we?" Kimberly demanded, never one to enjoy having her favorite jeans coated in the carcasses of dead spiders. "Seriously, is this Zordon's spare room?"

"It's the lower level of the Command Center," Billy explained. "We've been here before."

"You say so."

"So it worked?" Aisha asked uncertainly. "We're sure?"

"Only one way to be certain," the genius muttered, leading the way through the cluttered and dirty corridors. He moved with conviction, never once looking back or down alternative paths. No one questioned his choice of direction, but KC couldn't help but wonder where they were and what their destination might be. Nothing so far had indicated the kind of technology necessary to give the Rangers their power nor did anything point to the multi-story mechanical giants that they rode into battle. Still, everyone, even KC, followed him.

After a turn, Rocky announced. "Wait, I know this place! C'mon!" He ran ahead into the dimly lit corridor and toward the only exit they had yet seen.

It was a pair of doors, large and seemingly made of stone. A pair of lightning bolts marked each door, though, at least to KC, it was the green glow surrounding the carvings that seemed of far more interest. It wasn't a light. That would have made some sort of sense. This was more akin to the bioluminescence of deep-sea fish than to anything that belonged underground. At their approach, the doors slid open noiselessly, and that worrying green expanded toward them.

"Definitely déjà vu," someone commented. KC was too distracted to care who spoke.

"That's the vortex," Tanya said.

"Vortex?" she repeated, suddenly far less interested in seeing the hidden world of the Power Rangers than she had ever been. The derelict basement was bad enough. She certainly had no desire to be plunged through a wall of green slime.

Billy was beside her, hand on her side and mouth by her ear. "It will be all right," he promised in a whisper. His hand ghosted across her hip, pushing her closer to the vortex. "We'll negotiate the crossing together."

His hand pressed into her back, inching her through the slime and into the glittering world on the other side.

If the imagineers at Disney World ever got it in their heads to create a ride based on the human nasal cavity, KC was sure she would be able to provide them with a few pointers. She was now an expert on what it must feel like to journey through snot. Seriously, it was even green.

"And I thought the teleporting was bad," she gagged and flicked the clinging mucus from her fingers. She dug desperately into her back pocket, hunting for the bandana she hoped was still folded and tucked away. Instead, her searching fingers fell on something round and solid. "What the…?"

She pulled it from her pocket, frowning down at it until she realized what it was.

The Power Coin was considerably lighter than she had thought it would be. Something that transformed an average teenager into someone capable of taking on intergalactic evil ought to carry the weight of such responsibility, but it was no heavier than the half-dollar coin her numismatist aunt had let her keep. Where that coin held the face of a president, this held a lightning bolt identical to the ones that had been hewn into the stone doors guarding the vortex. She turned it in her hand, smiling down at the triceratops that almost seemed to be smiling back.

"Why, Mr. Cranston, I do believe you lost something," she commented.

Billy offered a hesitant smile of his own. "I couldn't be sure you would be granted access to the Power Chamber without a Power Coin."

"So instead of saying something, you slipped it into my pocket like a thief playing role reversal?"

His shoulders seemed to swallow his head as he ducked shamefully. "Affirmative."

"Idiot."

Kimberly's voice broke into their private moment, speaking the question that she herself would have asked if she hadn't been so distracted. "What is this place?"

"The Power Chamber," Tommy replied.

"Think of it as Command Center 2.0," Billy offered eagerly, running to join the former Pink Ranger at a control panel. "It had been in the mainframe as a potential reconfiguration since before we were chosen. It took the destruction of the original Command Center and the power of the Zeo Crystal to bring it into existence."

The woman nodded as if she understood. "Wish remodeling our house was that easy."

Jason snorted a laugh before clearing his throat. "So, the Power Chamber was reconstructed," he observed, and pointed to the tall cylinder of glass, "Zordon's tube is here."

KC stared at the darkness beyond the glass, trying to imagine what it must have been like to talk to a man so old and impossible. Her only frame of reference was Oz the Great and Powerful, who of course was a sham artist behind a curtain. Given the way Billy and the others always mentioned Zordon in the same breath with Alpha 5, she couldn't help wonder if the little robot was really the brains all along. Maybe the giant floating head was just a cover. It seemed plausible, certainly more believable than ten-thousand-year-old enormous heads, but, then again, they lived in a world with dinosaur robots and witches who rode through the air on penny-farthing bicycles. Not to mention a world with green snot vortexes. No, an ancient Wiseman living in a graduated cylinder made about as much sense as anything else.

She paced around the tube while the others talked and plotted.

Eyes pointed skyward, she found herself stumbling when her feet collided with something metal.

"Ow," she complained, and moved to offer the thing a kick, but stopped. "Uh, guys."

"What is it?" Tommy asked, running the short distance to join her. The smile on his face told her she had been right to still her angry foot. "Jason, give me a hand!"

The pair worked together, each taking hold of the object and pulling it across the floor. As it emerged from beneath a control panel, it looked less like a random bit of junk and more like a leg, a torso, an arm, a body.

"Is that Alpha 5?" she asked.

"It appears to be," Billy said, prodding the mechanical being. Nothing happened. He set to work, pulling open the robot's back and testing the wires for loose connections.

"Ay—"

Aisha took the metal hand. "Alpha?"

"Ay—"

"Keep going, Billy," the woman encouraged.

"—yi—"

The voice was not the shrill, childlike voice Kimberly had once described. It was fluctuating between the lower ranges, like her cassette deck used to when the batteries had run down.

"Billy!" KC cried. "Move him closer to the tube."

The genius paused in his work, considering her instruction. It took less than a second for the light of understanding to glint in his eyes. "Affirmative," he agreed and snapped the panel shut in the robot's back. "To the tube."

They pushed and pulled and cursed and succeeded in moving the automaton to stand beside the tube. Billy took the metal hand and pressed it to the glass.

"Ay—"

The voice was stronger, higher.

"Ay—"

The lights on its chest blinked.

"Ay—"

Its head lifted.

"Ay-yi-yi-yi-yi!"

"Alpha!"

"How did you know, Rangers?" the robot asked; its voice clear and lights shining bright.

KC found herself the object of intense focus. "Well, he sounded like a Walkman with dead batteries," she hedged and gestured to the resident genius, "You said the tube had regenerative energy, and I tripped on him near the tube. I figured that maybe he'd been trying to recharge his batteries but didn't make it close enough before they ran down."

"That is precisely what I had been doing!" Alpha confirmed cheerfully.

"And you didn't want to come," Tommy muttered in her ear, giving her a nudge with his shoulder.

"Oh, shut it."

"Rangers, I am so glad you're here," the robot flailed. "The world is in danger."

Jason gave the mechanical shoulder a consoling pat. "We know, Alpha. What can we do about it?"

In the moment that passed between the question being asked and robot calculating his response, KC wondered if a compartment would pop open and reveal a new set of coins or crystals or whatever it was that gave modern day Rangers their powers.

"You must become Rangers again," Alpha said.

A cacophony of protests rang in the cavernous chamber, but it wasn't Billy's strong, certain voice that cut through the noise. The words 'impossible', 'can't', 'broken' and 'lost' flew from every mouth. Every mouth but one. Billy looked as if his every notion, however half-formed and vague, had been confirmed beyond any doubt or debate.

"That was part of my plan," he said, his voice cutting through the noise. He looked apologetically to KC before turning to Tommy. "That's why I came to your house last night. Tommy, you have to bring the Power Rangers back."


	7. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The noise that followed Alpha 5's command to become Power Rangers had been deafening. Everyone shouting their objections to the, quite frankly, impossible task. Where the robot's words had shocked them into action, Billy's stunned them into silence. The Power Chamber froze in a tableau of disbelief – Aisha with her hand half-way to a button on the panel before her; Kat with her arm in the air where she had seemingly been gesturing to the absent Zordon; Tommy simply looked bewildered.

Kimberly broke the picture first, eyeing her husband as if she had never before laid eyes on him. "Say what?"

"You need Tommy to resurrect the Power Rangers," Aisha repeated, blinking her confusion.

Billy nodded. "Affirmative."

"Tommy?" Jason questioned, incredulity turning his voice flat.

Again, the genius nodded. The gesture brought on a second round of silence while the former Rangers considered his affirmation. It seemed unlikely anyone would question Billy's calm assurance and absolute conviction in his plan and the one man necessary to making it succeed.

Yet, when Adam broke the silence, he muttered a doubtful, "Tommy _Oliver_?"

The man shrunk under the hard glares being sent his way from both the doctor of paleontology and the Ranger's former technical advisor.

"Yeah, I get it," Tommy sighed. "I'm not your first choice."

"It's not that," Tanya insisted, stopping and reconsidering her words. "Okay, yeah, it kind of is. I know you have a doctorate and everything, but you're _Tommy_. You're just so… 'aw, man'." She ducked her head and gave a surprisingly accurate parody of the hero.

It was clear from the look on his face that he wanted to dispute her words but couldn't. He too closely resembled the person the Yellow Ranger had just portrayed. He still muttered 'aw, man' whenever confronted by something unexpected; he had said it before attempting to shift that log from the backyard, and again when the effort had nearly ruptured a disc in his spine. No, he might have been the longest serving Ranger in the room, but he certainly wasn't the great and noble leader any of them would have hoped for.

"You're sure you mean our Tommy?" Adam questioned. "It's got to be a pretty common name. There isn't a genius electromechanical engineer Tommy Oliver out there?"

"It is entirely feasible," Billy conceded. "However, this is the Tommy Oliver necessary to my plans."

"Are you—"

Tommy cut off the protest with a withering stare before turning back to Billy. "What did you have in mind? My expertise is fairly limited. I'm good at Karate, fighting monsters and digging up dinosaurs."

"It's the final point which holds the most value to our current situation," the genius informed him.

"Fossils?" KC questioned. "That's why you need him so bad?"

"Precisely."

The woman frowned. "Sorry, but exactly how are fossils meant to help you?"

"Not the fossils but the techniques necessary to unearthing them. Tommy, how many have you discovered?"

He shrugged. "A few."

"A dozen unique finds across three continents and five epochs," Billy corrected. "I've read your published works. I know the difficulty involved in the digs. Your methods of photographing subsurface objects revolutionized the field."

Tommy ducked his head, "Aw, ma—I mean, yeah, kind of."

Billy pressed a series of buttons on the panel before him, apparently signaling a door across the room to open. "Do you think we have enough parts to build your variant of the radiographic imager?"

Brow folded in thought, Tommy made his way to the now-open door, studying the parts and equipment no one but Billy had ever bothered paying any attention to. He pulled out bits of metal and wire, laying them aside with care, and dug further into the room. When he had all but vanished into the graveyard of forgotten parts, he announced, "I think this could work!"

No one was sure what to say. A cheer would probably have been appropriate, but not one among them could manage it.

Rocky looked around at the others, his face a perfect mirror to their own bewilderment. "Did anyone know Tommy could do that?"

Beside him, Kimberly looked shamefaced as she admitted, "I never got around to reading his papers. They were all so dry, and I couldn't understand half of what he wrote."

"They're brilliant," Billy informed her as he moved to follow the undiscovered paleontological genius.

Three hours passed with everyone except Billy and Tommy feeling fairly useless. Jason and Rocky, at least, were able to lend some muscle to the duo, shifting the larger pieces of equipment out of the way to make room for Tommy to work. As he welded and wired the old pieces into a new configuration, all the questions and doubts shifted into awe.

"Back in college, when he was a junior, he mentioned that his advisor moved him into a graduate-level class," Tanya said in a quiet voice.

"I think he said his professor had asked him to review his notes and help co-author a textbook," Kat added, her tone tinged with regret as she remembered how little she had supported him in his scientific endeavors. He was halfway to his master's degree when they had called it quits on their relationship; Tommy seeming to care more about animals dead for millions of years than he did about her recent accomplishments. Those accolades seemed miniscule now that she saw just how great his gift truly was. "I never did read those notes."

It seemed to KC, who at least had the excuse of being across the country, that they never before understood just how smart Tommy really could be. It was an easy misunderstanding. He wasn't like Billy, speaking in incomprehensible sentences filled with twenty-dollar words. Tommy, even after he started college, moved to grad-level classes before graduating with a bachelor's and started authoring textbooks for his own classmates, remained exactly as he had been before – personable, humble and down-to-earth. No one would have guessed he was a secret science whiz. After spending so much time with a wunderkind like Billy, it was easy to overlook a late-bloomer like Tommy.

"So, what exactly is the plan?" Kat questioned, sticking her head into the room as she shielded her eyes from the glow of the welder.

"This equipment will allow us to view the substrata, effectively locating whatever materials might have been entombed after the Command Center was destroyed," Billy explained with a smile. "If we can pinpoint precisely what we are looking, we can lock onto it with the teleporter and bring it directly into the Power Chamber without necessitating any excessive manual labor in the task of excavation."

She nodded and turned to the only two women who were ever able to translate Billy's overenthusiastic science-speak. "What's the plan?"

"Tommy's machine will show what's buried underground," Aisha translated.

"Like in Jurassic Park," KC added.

"If there's something there, we can teleport it out without digging."

"Like on Star Trek."

"Oh, great!" the Aussie beamed. "Good plan."

"It is, actually," Jason agreed, crossing his arms over his chest as he stood back and watched his friend work. "If I'd known he was as smart as that, I would have made him strategize back when we were both Rangers."

The original genius of the group stepped back, wiping his forehead on his sleeve. "While I agree that Tommy is skilled at the art of strategic planning, his true intelligence lies in the field of paleontology."

"Affirmative," the karate master said with a smile.

Moving past him, KC slid into the room where Tommy was working. She wasn't an expert on this brand of science, but it looked as if he knew what he was doing. He wore the same confidence on his face as he did when entering a tournament.

"Hey."

Tommy glanced up from his work, his glasses sliding down his nose. "Almost done," he assured her.

"Yeah, about that," she said slowly. "Why didn't you ever tell anyone about this?"

"What?"

"Your smarty-pants."

He offered a shrug. "I guess I didn't think anyone would understand it." He frowned as he spoke. "Billy would have."

"Yes, he does," she agreed. "So, have you forgiven him now that he appreciates your science?"

"You know how much I love getting praised," he joked with a grin.

"Dork."

"Nerd."

"Loser," she snorted.

"Quit distracting me, Chicken Little."

She sucked in an angry breath and threw a lump of metal at him a little harder than was strictly necessary. Only two of her friends knew her middle name was Francis, a truly unfortunate choice on her parents' part that left her with the initials KFC. Even this late in life, she wouldn't put it past anyone from giving her a new nickname if they found out.

Tommy's laughter chased her through the doorway and out into the Power Chamber.

"Whoa! Look at this place!" a voice echoed in the vast room. "What'd I miss?"

"Quite a bit," Kat said, pointing Zack toward the room where Tommy was showing off his cleverness.

"Is that Tommy?"

"Yep." Jason nodded.

"What's he doing?"

"Being a genius," KC informed him with an irritated sigh.

"Hold up," the man said, his hands extended as if to physically stop her words. "Are we talking about the same Tommy? Tommy Oliver? Our Tommy Oliver? There isn't, like, some other Tommy Oliver you –"

"Will you shut up already!" Tommy shouted.


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The sun had begun its decent by the time Tommy and Billy completed fabrication. Standing on the roof of the rebuilt Command Center, the sun-bleached desert was cut through with bars of black as the shadows stretched and grew.

"So where are we supposed to be looking?" Zack asked. He didn't direct the question to Tommy, still skeptical about the man being the brains behind this particular portion of the plan.

"Seriously," Kimberly said, wiping the sweat from her eyes. "It all looks the same."

"It doesn't, actually," her husband contradicted. He gestured to the west toward a bit of desert that looked little different than the rest. "See that patch of creosote? The part on the left is smaller. That means it's been disturbed."

"No way."

"Yes way," he smiled. "Remember when we met in Lyon?"

"Isn't that in France? There were French dinosaurs? Were they snooty?" Adam asked.

"I don't think that had been invented yet, or maybe snooty doesn't fossilize as well as bone does," her replied with a put-upon sigh. "I wasn't there for a dinosaur dig, thought. It was part of my thesis on using the age of forest plants to identify previously unknown structures."

The blank stares that met his proud declaration.

He sighed again, shoulders slumping. "Old plants means nothing was built there for a long time. New plants means the growth had been interrupted – by the building of a castle in Lyon, here it's because debris from the Command Center fell on it."

"So," Adam said slowly, "old plants means there's nothing there."

"Yes."

"Oh. Cool."

Tommy shook his head and turned back to the bushes he had pointed out. "That patch of creosote is considerably younger than the rest. Its growth was disrupted. We'll tag it with a geo-marker. "

"Will we find the crystal?"

"I can't know that," Tommy admitted. "For all I know, it was just a chunk of building that fell there. But we've got to start somewhere."

"All right, let's do this thing," Zack said, clapping his hands together and spinning toward the door. He lead the way down through the building and out into the surrounding desert.

KC joined him, marching out into the dusty landscape with Tommy directing them from the roof. She could see Aisha and Kat some forty yards to the North, investigating a tiny Joshua tree. The chatter coming through the communicator still around her wrist informed her that everyone was out geo-marking spots according to Tommy's instructions.

"So, what do you think about all this?"

She looked over to where Zack was attempting to figure out just which shrub was worth being marked.

"I don't really know," she confessed. "It's hard to believe any of it."

"Especially where Tommy's a genius."

"Weirdly, that's the only part of this whole mess I can actually wrap my brain around."

"I think you're the only one," he informed her.

The communicator beeped and crackled, Kimberly's voice screaming out her surprise. "I think we have a problem," the woman called. "Tommy, get your butt down here!"

The former Ranger by her side cursed as he reached for the morpher he no longer kept at the small of his back. He threw the geo-marker at the patch of younger bushes. "Close enough. Come on!"

"What are we running to?" KC called as she raced after him.

"No idea!" he shouted back.

"Right," she muttered to herself as she ran, but kept advancing on the rocky outcropping where the other set of Yellow and Pink Rangers had been sent.

Her converse sneakers skidded to atop a dusty boulder.

Billy had given the barest of descriptions when he mentioned the soldiers the Aquitar Rangers had engineered. Based on that inadequate brief, she had fashioned a picture that was apparently nothing even close to the truth. She knew they were in some way made from fish DNA, so she imagined a gaping mouth and glassy eyes bulging out from the sides of their narrow, tiny-brained heads. Having seen the clownish, bumbling Putties and the mindless Cogs, she threw a bit from each into the mix. All together it made a hilariously pointless minion that was so easy to defeat it was pointless to even send them to begin with. She ought to have known better. The Rangers of Aquitar had outwitted the smartest Ranger Earth had.

These soldiers were nothing like the image she had formed.

They wore an armor that flashed and shined as they moved in formation – not the rigid movements of military formations but the kind of likeminded formations she had seen in flocks of birds or, more accurately, schools of fish. These soldiers hadn't been trained. They fought with their own instincts, and those instincts were derived from the predatory fish the Alien Rangers had used to create them, those instincts went for the weak, for the kill.

"Billy," she screamed into the communicator. "It's those things – those fish things. Get us out of here!"

The teleportation field sparked around her, squeezing her until she broke down into her most basic parts. The journey that had taken the better part of twenty minutes was completed inside a single second, her molecules reforming again in the safety of the Power Chamber.

"Ay-yi-y-yi!"

"KC, are you all right?"

She staggered and gripped at the shoulders of the man standing nearest. "Billy," she breathed. "They were awful."

His arms were around her, as strong and comforting as they has ever been, though it didn't seem enough when confronted by what was about as close to her worst nightmare as she was every going to get while still awake. Around her, the others were regaining their footing after the abrupt transition of teleportation; Adam, who had been halfway through a roundhouse kick when Alpha locked on to him, completed the move inside the Power Chamber, sending Rocky flying when his foot hit the man square in the chest.

"Shit, sorry," Adam called and ran to collect his friend.

"So, those are Piscelons," Kat said, staring into the glowing sphere as it showed the lethal fighting force as they moved through the desert.

"Did everyone plant their markers?" Billy asked, his arm still firmly around her.

A chorus of affirmations ran through the group, and Tommy hurried to set his machine to running. "It would be more accurate if we were able to actually go outside and run the scan directly above the areas, but—"

"Talk sexy science later," KC ordered. "Rescue artifacts from bad guys now."

"Yes, ma'am," he grinned and pressed a series of buttons on his creation. It hummed and whirred, which was apparently what it was meant to do because Tommy looked in no way concerned by the noises. He smiled as the machine connected through wires to the Power Chamber computers and the sphere filled with images of vague shapes surrounded by more vague shapes. "There."

"What?" Kimberly asked.

"You can't see that?"

"I see a blob of brown in a mass of more brown."

"The resolution would be so much better if we could take this outside," he sighed. "It's an artifact."

"The Zeo Crystal?" Rocky asked, rubbing at the bloom already blooming on his cheek. He wasn't alone. Nearly everyone who had set foot outside the Command Center was sporting a cut or bruise from the Piscelons. Adam, it appeared, had taken the brunt of the damage; half his face was already darkening, and blood was working its way through his sleeve from a cut on his shoulder.

"No idea," Tommy said. "The resolution isn't as good as I'd hoped. Alpha, lock on to the signal and teleport it here."

"You got it, dude," the robot chirped. He pressed a fast succession of keys and buttons, and a beam of light shone down from the ceiling. "Incoming."

KC blinked and strained to make out the shape of the thing that had been carried in on the light. It didn't look like a crystal. It looked too long, too narrow, too sharp. It looked more like a sword.

"Shut up," Kimberly cried. "Is that the Sword of Power?"

"Affirmative," Billy said, finally releasing KC as he moved closer to the rescued relic. "This is most excellent."

"How? We need the crystal," Tanya griped.

He looked to her, glee still written across his face. "It means my hypothesis was correct. The artifacts from the Command Center were scattered in the surrounding area and are still there. I feared someone or something might have claimed them."

"Even if they knew where to look, evil can't touch the Zeo Crystal," Jason insisted.

"True. However, overzealous amateur archeologists who are neither good nor evil might well have unearthed any number of valuable devices or artifacts," Billy contradicted.

"Well, hurry up and get everything else back in here before those guppies can mess with our markers or the Aquitians figure out what they're for," Kat said, hands flapping anxiously. "Alpha…"

"Already on it, dudette," the robot assured her, repeating the sequence of keys and buttons to activate the teleporter.

As he duplicated the process again and again, the Power Chamber was flooded with so much light it was impossible to see the objects he was retrieving. KC shielded her eyes and waited for the signal that it was safe to look. It came not from the automaton, but Tommy.

"Whoa! It's my old dagger," he shouted. "Man, I missed it." He was cradling the dagger in his hands, testing the weight as if seeing how it held up to the memory he had clung to. After a moment, he brought it to his mouth and played the short melody that had once summoned a fierce fighting machine. Nothing happened.

"Sorry, Tommy, but the Dragonzord is unlikely to respond without a more fully formed Power Grid to provide it with energy," Billy told him apologetically.

"Nah, I didn't really expect anything." It was clear from his tone that he was lying, if only to himself. "Let's get everything else back, Alpha."

"The final marker is being isolated now," Alpha said.


	9. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

 _I want to fight._

The words echoed in his ears, which he knew was physically impossible.

Those words had been spoken decades ago. He could still remember the determined jut of her chin, the way her eyes narrowed as if daring him to turn her down. He wouldn't have denied her even if the statistics hadn't already been in her favor. As it was, given the disproportionate number of her friends who were Power Rangers, he had calculated that KC was some seventy percent more likely to be the target of an attack; he had planned to approach her about learning karate from Tommy, but she beat him to it.

 _I want to fight._

He had watched her first lessons from a table overlooking the workout area, his spinach juice untouched as he studied her stance. She wasn't what anyone would call a natural. Even when punching nothing but air, she looked frightened, timid.

The same as she looked now.

Distorted as the image was in the viewing globe, there was no mistaking the look of terror on KC's face as she stopped yards from the fight. Kimberly and Tanya, Kat and Aisha, Jason and Adam, Rocky and Zack had all run headfirst into the fray. KC, though, she didn't shout a battle cry and start punching; she called for help, for escape, for him.

"Why are you smiling?"

Billy blinked and looked at KC, whole and unharmed beside him. He shook his head. "Nothing, just thinking."

"That's not nothing when you're the one doing it," she said, offering his temple a poke.

He tried not to blush, but the reaction was involuntary.

"So, did we rescue all the artifacts?" Tanya asked. "I'd like my husband to have his powers back before we face off against those things again. He kind of got his ass handed to him." She and Adam both winced as she lifted the ice pack from his bruised face to survey the damages.

"I didn't do that bad," he mumbled, though his words were slightly slurred from the swelling.

"In answer to your question," Billy cut through the rest of his weak protest, "we are still missing several artifacts. Including, it would seem, the Zeo Crystal."

"Seriously," Kimberly groaned.

"It's not so surprising. The explosion that destroyed the Command Center could have sent debris flying to a radius of nearly half a kilometer. I anticipated some items being deposited in the vicinity, but the majority of what remains could be anywhere inside this perimeter." He sent a map to the viewing globe, marking just how much area they still had to comb.

"Man, this is gonna take forever," Zack said.

"On the contrary, it will go considerably faster now that we have these items secured."

"Don't see how."

"During teleportation, the computer picked up an odd energy signature. I've managed to isolate it as a radiation unique to items that survived the explosion," he replied. "I can program the energy signature into the computers, which can run automatically, scanning and teleporting any remaining objects baring that unique signature."

"Brilliant!" Kat cried.

"So we don't have to do anything else?" Jason questioned.

Billy shook his head. "No, the computer can take over from here."

"Good, I need to go spar. It's been too long since I faced an opponent who actually wants to hurt me," the man admitted, rubbing at the ache in his side.

"That's because you aren't married," Adam commented with a grin made lop-sided by his injuries.

Billy glanced at KC, wondering what she made of their jokes. She had never witnessed this part of their dynamic. Through the years, she had watched the building suspense as enemies rose and threatened and the return to normalcy when it was all over, but she had never seen them immediately after the battles when relief spilled out in whatever form it could take. This must seem like puerile frivolity to her.

"To the dojo, then?" Tommy suggested.

"It's being renovated," Jason countered with a scowl. "Should have gotten it done months ago, but I didn't know this was going to happen."

"My club!" Zack said. "Plenty of room to move."

"Not my style," Kimberly shook her head.

"Yeah, I need some machines," Tanya agreed, making a face as she tried to lift the Sword of Light and let it fall with a grimace.

"Youth Center?" Rocky offered. "I mean, I know it's technically trespassing, but that never really stopped us before."

A murmur of consent ran through the assembly and by unspoken agreement everyone reached for their communicators and teleported from the Power Chamber. Zack remained while Billy took a moment to program the radiation signature into the computer and set it to searching the desert around the Command Center for whatever might still be out there.

"You okay with all this?" the dancer asked.

"Affirmative."

"I'm just saying, this is all pretty personal for you. It's not some faceless enemy. These," he hesitated as he hunted for the right word, eventually settling for a loaded, " _people_ took what could have been some pretty good years of your life."

Billy sighed. "I have had ample time to contemplate the subjunctive possibilities had I been more observant. This isn't about me. This is about Earth and every human life that will be subjugated should we fail."

"Every human life also includes you." The man squeezed his shoulder. It was a gesture strange to him when first performed, but after considerable time and repetition, he understood it to be a hug in a more socially acceptable form for insecure males. He now accepted it for what it was, an action meant to comfort, support and imply solidarity.

"Thank you." He pressed the final buttons. "Program complete."

"So, we can go now?"

"Correct," Billy said. "I'll be back later, Alpha."

"Have a good time," the robot replied, somehow sounding like a proud but also despondent parent watching all their children drive off.

He felt guilty leaving the automaton alone after he had been without company for twenty years. "You could come with us."

"Someone should stay behind to monitor the progress of the scans and keep an eye on space for incoming hostiles."

Billy couldn't dispute his logic. "Be careful, Alpha. The Aquitians could teleport in here if they chose to."

"Let's see them try. I haven't just been sitting here collecting dust all this time. I've added all kinds of surprises. It'll be 'pasta la pizza' for the next bad guy who tries to break into my house," the robot insisted.

"Well, we'll see you later then." He touched the button on his communicator, and they were transported instantly to the quiet darkness of the Youth Center.


End file.
